Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Alice Hoffman talks about characters and their relation to writers. On WBUR's Cognoscenti:

Then there are novelists who want to “escape” real life and real people and create alternate universes. They are the ones who wear headsets while writing in Starbucks, rather than pulling their chairs close to strangers, the better to jot down random bits of overheard dialogue. These “escapist” cases’ characters are made up of a combination of memory, imagination, literary influences and shared mythology. In other words, equal parts experience and fantasy.
This explains how writers with very little life experience can create characters that appear to be so unlike themselves. Exhibit A: Heathcliff from Emily Brontë’s classic novel “Wuthering Heights.” Brontë, who lived a sheltered life with her sisters and father in Haworth, England, rarely going farther than the moors surrounding the village, created the most psychologically complicated male character in literature.
There are those who say Heathcliff was partially modeled on Emily’s brother, Branwell, a talented but self-destructive young man likely addicted to alcohol and laudanum, and thought to be in love with a married woman he could never possess. These facts may have been the skeleton for the character of Heathcliff, but the emotional power that brings him to life as a separate being comes from Brontë’s imagination. If indeed there was a human model for the character, then the author added so many levels of her own insights that another, stronger being was formed.

One half of a famous pair of real-life sisterly scribes has a birthday today: Emily Brontë. The Wuthering Heights author spent a lifetime penning poems and other tales with siblings Charlotte and Anne (using masculine pseudonyms), all devoted to their craft and each other — especially during the troubled times of their youth. Since the Brontës often used material from their lives to inform their stories — including their tight-knit relationship — we felt inspired to take a look at fictional sisters who also shared powerful bonds full of passionate and complex emotions unique amongst women and girls. (Alison Nastasi)

In the early 19th century, writing professionally was frowned upon as being unladylike. But Brontë had too much talent keep it hidden. She got around the limitations placed on women by writing under a male pen name.
Unfortunately, she never got the chance to write another novel. She died of tuberculosis when she was just 30 years old.
Two years later, her sister Charlotte made sure she got the credit she never received during her lifetime by reprinting Wuthering Heights under her real name. (Mike Kmack)

What constitutes an independent UK movie? The top five were, The King's Speech; The Inbetweeners Movie; Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; Horrid Henry The Movie; and Jane Eyre.Jane Eyre had the most skewed audience of all; 86% of the audience were women and 54% were aged over 55. I saw it and with hindsight it is a wonder that I came out alive. (James Whitmore)

We disagree with these figures. Not about accuracy but interpretation. Young audiences have seen the film (as we have been reporting for more than a year) but not necessarily on a cinema screen.